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Based on the classic distinction between semantic and episodic memory, people answer general-knowledge questions by querying their semantic memory. And yet, an appeal of trivia games is the variety of memory experiences they arouse—including the recollection of episodic details. We report the first in-depth exploration of the memory states that arise for recalled answers to general-knowledge questions. In 2 experiments, participants classified their answers as learning memory or related memory forms of recollection, as feels familiar or just know forms of nonrecollection, or as a guess. A recollection state was reported for nearly half of the correct answers. Learning memory, related memory, and just know states showed similarly high accuracy and confidence—whereas the feels familiar state was much lower. The differences between familiarity and knowing highlight the importance of distinguishing these oft-conflated states. Our study establishes that episodic memory often contributes to retrieval of general-knowledge, and that the memory states arising during retrieval can be diagnostic of accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Four experiments investigated the mnemonic effects of generating survival situations. People were given target words and asked to generate survival situations involving that stimulus (e.g., DOOR: "I'm in a house that's on fire, and I can escape through the door"). No constraints were placed on the generation process, other than that it must be survival-related and refer to the target stimulus. Following a series of these generation trials people were given a surprise retention test for the target words. Across four experiments the survival generation task produced significantly better retention than several deep processing controls including: (a) a pleasantness-rating task, (b) an autobiographical retrieval task, and (c) a task that required people to generate unusual uses for the target items. These results demonstrate the power of survival processing in a new way and provide diagnostic information about the proximate mechanisms that may underlie survival processing advantages. They also extend the generality of survival processing beyond the standard relevance-rating procedure that has been used in virtually all prior research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People frequently receive performance feedback that describes how well they achieved in the past, and how they could improve in future. In educational contexts, future-oriented (directive) feedback is often argued to be more valuable to learners than past-oriented (evaluative) feedback; critically, prior research led us to predict that it should also be better remembered. We tested this prediction in six experiments. Subjects read written feedback containing evaluative and directive comments, which supposedly related to essays they had previously written (Experiments 1-2), or to essays another person had written (Experiments 3-6). Subjects then tried to reproduce the feedback from memory after a short delay. In all six experiments, the data strongly revealed the opposite effect to the one we predicted: despite only small differences in wording, evaluative feedback was in fact recalled consistently better than directive feedback. Furthermore, even when adult subjects did recall directive feedback, they frequently misremembered it in an evaluative style. These findings appear at odds with the position that being oriented toward the future is advantageous to memory. They also raise important questions about the possible behavioral effects and generalizability of such biases, in terms of students' academic performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relation between working memory capacity (WMC) and recall from long-term memory (LTM) was examined in the current study. Participants performed multiple measures of delayed free recall varying in presentation duration and self-reported their strategy usage after each task. Participants also performed multiple measures of WMC. The results suggested that WMC and LTM recall were related, and part of this relation was due to effective strategy use. However, adaptive changes in strategy use and study time allocation were not related to WMC. Examining multiple variables with structural equation modeling suggested that the relation between WMC and LTM recall was due to variation in effective strategy use, search efficiency, and monitoring abilities. Furthermore, all variables were shown to account for individual differences in LTM recall. These results suggest that the relation between WMC and recall from LTM is due to multiple strategic factors operating at both encoding and retrieval. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although retrieval often enhances subsequent memory (the testing effect), a negative testing effect has recently been documented in which prior retrieval harms later recall compared with restudying. The negative testing effect was predicated on the negative generation effect and the item-specific-relational framework. The present experiments examine whether the negative testing effect persists over longer delays, whether the testing manipulation interacts with retention interval, and whether the negative testing and negative generation effects respond similarly to delay. Experiment 1 demonstrated a significant negative testing effect on an immediate free-recall test but not on a delayed test (after a 2-day retention interval). Furthermore, the retrieval condition produced less forgetting than the restudy condition. Under similar conditions (Experiment 2), generation likewise produced a negative effect on an immediate free-recall test but not after a 2-day delay. In addition, the generation condition produced less forgetting over 2 days than did the read condition. The results uncover important similarities between the mnemonic effects of retrieving information from episodic (testing effect) and semantic (generation effect) memory. The pattern of forgetting across delay also has relevance for accounts of the Testing X Retention interaction, a prominent phenomenon in the literature on the testing effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though retrieving information typically results in improved memory on a subsequent test (the testing effect), Peterson and Mulligan (2013) outlined the conditions under which retrieval practice results in poorer recall relative to restudy, a phenomenon dubbed the negative testing effect. The item-specific-- relational account proposes that this occurs when retrieval disrupts interitem relational encoding despite enhancing item-specific information. Four experiments examined the negative testing effect, showing the following: (a) The basic phenomenon is replicable in free recall; (b) it extends to category-cued recall; (c) it converts to a positive testing effect when the final test is recognition, a test heavily reliant on item-specific information; (d) the negative testing effect in recall, robust in a pure list design, reverses to a positive testing effect in a mixed-list design; and (_e) more generally, the present testing manipulation interacts with experimental design, such that an initially negative effect becomes positive or an initially positive effect becomes larger as the design changes from pure-list to mixed-list. The breadth of results fits well within the item-specific--relational framework and provides evidence against 2 alternative accounts. Finally, this research indicates that the testing effect shares important similarities with the generation effect and other similar memory phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research suggests that spaced learning, compared with massed learning, results in superior long-term retention (the spacing effect). Son (2010) identified a potentially important moderator of the spacing effect: metacognitive control. Specifically, when participants chose massed restudy but were instead forced to space the restudy, the spacing effect disappeared in adults (or was reduced in children). This suggests spacing is less effective (or possibly ineffective) if implemented against the wishes of the learner. A closer examination of this paradigm, however, reveals that item-selection issues might alternatively explain the disappearance of the spacing effect. In the current experiments, we replicated the original design demonstrating that an itemselection confound is operating. Furthermore, relative to a more appropriate baseline, the spacing effect was significant and of the same size whether participants' restudy choices were honored or violated. In this paradigm, metacognitive control does not appear to moderate the spacing effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The word frequency paradox refers to the finding that low frequency words are better recognized than high frequency words yet high frequency words are better recalled than low frequency words. Rather than comparing separate groups of low and high frequency words, we sought to quantify the functional relation between word frequency and memory performance across the broad range of frequencies typically used in episodic memory experiments. Here we report that both low frequency and high frequency words are better recalled than midfrequency words. In contrast, we only observe a low frequency advantage when participants were given a subsequent item recognition test. The U-shaped relation between word frequency and recall probability may help to explain inconsistent results in studies using mixed lists with separate groups of high and low frequency words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Participants studied category-exemplar pairs (FRUIT Cherry, FRUIT Grape) and then practiced some of the items (Cherry). In Experiment 1, practice that involved retrieving the item from memory suppressed recall of related items (Grape), a finding known as the retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) effect. In Experiment 2, practice that involved studying the item without retrieval produced no RIF effect. Both retrieval and nonretrieval practice facilitated the subsequent recall of practiced items (Cherry). The dissociation between "strengthening" of practiced items and forgetting of related items is thought to be evidence that RIF is the result of inhibition during earlier retrieval attempts rather than interference from competing memories at retrieval. However, simulations of the SAM-REM model show that competitor interference can account for this dissociation. Experiments 3-6 supported the predictions of the model by demonstrating that nonretrieval practice can produce the RIF effect under conditions that emphasize context encoding or increase the number of competitors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across 3 experiments, we investigated the factors that dictate when taking a test improves subsequent memory performance (the testing effect). In Experiment 1, participants retrieving a set of targets during a retrieval practice phase ultimately recalled fewer of those targets compared with a group of participants who studied the targets twice, a negative testing effect. In Experiments 2 and 3, theoretically motivated modifications to the basic design of Experiment 1 reversed this pattern, demonstrating the more typical positive testing effect. The results from all 3 experiments were predicted by the multifactor account, an explanatory account applied to the generation effect (improved memory for self-generated material), which details why generation typically improves memory, as well as those conditions under which generation can impair memory performance. These results suggest the testing effect and the generation effect may be understood within a common framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When body movements are stored in memory in an organized manner, linked to a common retrieval cue like the effector with which to execute the movement, interference may arise as soon as one initiates the execution of a specific body movement in the presence of the retrieval cue because related motor programs also are activated. We investigated the resolution of such interference between motor programs. Participants learned several sequential finger movements, each consisting of the movement of 2 fingers of either the left or the right hand. Subsequently, they performed retrieval practice on half of the items of 1 hand. A final recall test then assessed memory for all initially learned items. In 3 experiments, retrieval-induced forgetting occurred; that is, retrieval practice impaired the recall of unpracticed movements belonging to the practiced hand. The results suggest that retrieval-based inhibition resolved interference between motor programs pertaining to the same hand, thereby pointing to a common principle pertaining to different domains of human information processing, concerning verbal, percep-tual, or motor information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors investigated the effects of valence and arousal on memory using a dual-process model that quantifies recollective and nonrecollective components of recall without relying on metacognitive judgments to separate them. The results showed that valenced words increased reconstruction (a component of nonrecollective retrieval) relative to neutral words. In addition, the authors found that positive valence increased recollective retrieval in comparison to negative valence, whereas negative valence increased nonrecollective retrieval relative to positive valence. The latter effect, however, depended on arousal: It was reliable only when arousal was high. The present findings supported the notion that emotional valence is a conceptual gist because it affected nonrecollective retrieval and because subjects' recall protocols were clustered by valence. The results challenge the hypothesis that valence affects only recollection, and they clarify previous inconsistent findings about the effects of emotion on memory accuracy and brain activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many theories, forgetting is closely linked to the passage of time. In the present experiments, recall in a short-term memory task was less accurate when the retention interval included a difficult arithmetic addition task, compared with an easy task. In a novel condition, the interfering task was switched from hard to easy partway through the retention interval. Recall accuracy at long retention intervals recovered from the level Consistent with the hard interfering task to a more accurate level consistent with an easy interfering task. Such recovery is not in agreement with theories that link forgetting to the passage of time, such as trace decay. The reversed forgetting functions are more consistent with an account in which different levels of nonspecific retroactive interference in the retention interval just before the time of retrieval influence different levels of performance accuracy. With the uncoupling of interference levels from time, forgetting is dissociated from the passage of time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nairne, Thompson, and Pandeirada (2007) discovered a strong and rather general memory advantage for word material processed in a survival-related context. One possible explanation of this effect conceives survival processing as a special form of encoding: Nature specifically "tuned" our memory systems to process and remember fitness-relevant information. We tested this explanation by studying whether the survival processing effect is robust against encoding manipulations that do not affect the fitness relevance of information. Three experiments replicated a strong survival processing effect under standard conditions but showed that the mnemonic benefit of survival processing diminishes or even vanishes when participants focus on a single problem (Experiments 1 and 2) or technique (Experiment 3) of survival. We argue that it is not survival processing per se that facilitates recall but the richness and distinctiveness with which information is encoded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined free recall and metacognitive judgments of ambiguous sentences studied with and without clues to facilitate their comprehension. Sentences were either studied without clues, with clues meaningfully embedded, or with clues following a 10-s interval delay. After presentation, subjects made judgments of comprehension (JCOMPs) or judgments of learning (JOLs). Puzzling over the meaning of sentences for several seconds prior to receiving the clue enhanced recall compared with studying sentences without clues or with embedded clues. This benefit of effort after meaning was not reflected in JCOMPs or JOLs. Rather, sentences considered relatively easy to understand received higher JOLs regardless of experimental condition. Although effort after meaning enhanced recall, subjects displayed no awareness of this benefit in their judgments. Our study adds to a growing literature showing students' ignorance of factors affecting their own learning, which have important implications for education. Making learning conditions more difficult, thus requiring students to engage more cognitive effort, often leads to enhanced retention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the necessity of the decision to terminate memory search in many real-world memory tasks, little experimental work has investigated the underlying processes. In this study, the authors investigated termination decisions in free recall by providing participants an open-ended retrieval interval and requiring them to press a stop button when they had finished retrieving. Three variables important to assessing one's willingness to search memory were examined: (a) the time spent searching memory after the last successful retrieval before choosing to quit (the exit latency); (b) task difficulty; and (c) individual differences in motivation, as measured by Webster and Kruglanski's (1994) Need for Closure Scale. A strong negative correlation was found between individual differences in motivation and participants' exit latencies. This negative correlation was present only when the retrieval task started Out as relatively difficult. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two experiments explored the possibility that individual differences in working memory capacity (WMC) partially reflect differences in the size of the search set from which items are retrieved. High- and low-WMC individuals were tested in delayed (Experiment I) and continuous distractor (Experiment 2) free recall with varying list lengths. Across both experiments low-WMC individuals recalled fewer items than high-WMC individuals, recalled more previous list intrusions than high-WMC individuals, and recalled at a slower rate than high-WMC individuals. It is argued that low-WMC individuals' episodic retrieval deficits are partially due to the fact that these individuals search through a larger set of items than high-WMC individuals. Simulations based on a random search model were consistent with these general conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors investigated the idea that memory systems might have evolved to help us remember fitness-relevant information-specifically, information relevant to survival. In 4 incidental learning experiments, people were asked to rate common nouns for their survival relevance (e.g., in securing food, water, or protection from predators); in control conditions, the same words were rated for pleasantness, relevance to moving to a foreign land, or personal relevance. In surprise retention tests, participants consistently showed the best memory when words were rated for survival; the survival advantage held across recall, recognition, and for both within-subject and between-subjects designs. These findings suggest that memory systems are "tuned" to remember information that is processed for fitness, perhaps as a result of survival advantages accrued in the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the relation between item recognition and associative (cued) recall. Going beyond measures of performance on each task, the analysis focuses on the degree to which the contingency between successful recognition and successful recall of a studied item reflects the commonality of memory processes underlying the recognition and recall tasks. Specifically, 4 classes of distributed memory models are assessed for their ability to account for the relatively invariant correlation (≈ .5) between successive recognition and recall. Basic versions of each model either under- or overpredict the intertask correlation. Introducing variability in goodness-of-encoding and response criteria, as well as output encoding, enabled all 4 models to reproduce the moderate intertask correlation and the increase in correlation observed in 2 mixed-list experiments. This model-based analysis provides a general theoretical framework for interpreting contingencies between successive memory tests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]